Do you remember high-school? Not the wishing to be popular, trying to make the team, getting a girl or boy’s attention, or being extremely anxious to get your learner’s permit high-school. I’m talking about the are my grades good enough for this college? What do I need to do to get into the college I want to get in to high-school. That’s the high-school environment that made me drop my ancient greek class. Could I have been stronger and said I don’t care about the letters or numbers? Absolutely. Could I have tried to make a much bigger effort in Greek class and studied harder so I could be better at it? Without a doubt. But at what cost? Not getting into the college I wanted to? Spending night and day being anti-social and just studying Greek? That’s an expensive price to pay as a teenager. Keep in mind I haven’t even gotten in to the pressure you received from your parents and society. Let’s face it we are put in an environment that is not ideal for nurturing true learning.

So what should be done or what can be done? I don’t know. Change the education system, change the grading system, change the way our education is looked at – those are all things that can be done. The truth is there are much more intelligent people out there that are more apt to tackle this problem. The only thing I can say is even if we fall victim to this trap we shouldn’t be trapped forever. Once letters and numbers don’t dictate our lives there isn’t anything stopping us from learning and continuing to develop ourselves. True learning comes from the desire within yourself and the worst thing you can do is put that to the wayside. Embrace it and conquer those curiosities you had when you were younger.

When I saw most of my social circle using location based social applications I figured, why not give it a shot? After all, I use Twitter and I do rather enjoy that – maybe there will be some appeal to this. I must say prior to even trying location based social applications such as Foursquare and Gowalla I was skeptical. The appeal wasn’t there for me. My first thought was, “So I go somewhere and then I have to check-in to where I am to confirm that I am there? Seems a bit… well dumb.” Friends of mine replied back with, “No no! It’s cool because you can see everyone else who is there and where your friends are!” Which I then thought “If I am there don’t I already see everyone else who is already there? And if someone is my friend and they wanted me to go with them somewhere they would have asked me no?” So clearly, I didn’t see the appeal nor was I very receptive. Regardless, I decided to try out both Foursquare and Gowalla to see if there was something there. There wasn’t.

Maybe it’s the type of person I am, maybe I just don’t get it but none of these location based social applications served a purpose for me. Here are my major qualms with them:

They are not about me or my friends.  - Say what you want, but they’re truly about the places where you are visiting. It’s about the place you’re visiting and about being at that place. I can see how this benefits the location but how does it benefit me? It doesn’t.

They are a CHORE – I don’t know if it’s out of habit that most people check-in when they go somewhere but let me tell you I found it unbelievably hard to check-in to ANY location I went to. In fact, if I didn’t tell myself at the start of the day check in at locations I wouldn’t. Not only did I not like checking-in it didn’t feel rewarding what so ever. When I tweet I get replies, other people RT what I typed, and I know that there is visibility.

Not accurate enough service – GPS location services on our “smart media” are still not great enough for me to actually want to use any location based service that has to be so precise. Attempting to check-in somewhere where you clearly are and your device telling you you’re not there is annoying, frustrating, and down right discouraging. I don’t even want to think of using either Foursquare or Gowalla after one of these experiences.

What reward? None. - I don’t care if you’re the mayor of Starbucks or your local trendy cafe. Good for you, you go there a lot. Nor do I want to take your mayorship away or really have any plans to go somewhere every day, remember to check in, and try to take away your mayorship. As for rewards for checking in from the location I do see this as a more appropriate path but don’t see it being scaleable just yet.

In the end, I think Foursquare and Gowalla will develop into something I might want to use however their focus seems to be on elements on which the service itself is built around and that is the location. Once Foursquare and Gowalla start to see that as the main focal point, I feel that it could be an interesting service.

In the world of social games everyone is wondering what game is going to be the next biggest hit. What social game developer is going to start the newest trend? Many have decided that Zynga’s Treasure Isle and zSlide‘s Treasure Madness are the games to watch at the moment. Well not for me. My game to watch right now is Paradise Paintball 3D developed by CMUNE. Why am I watching this social game every second of the day? A game which was released in 2008 and does little to innovate on the social design front. It’s because Paradise Paintball is a guinea pig experiment for the future. Not because it’s a real-time game, there have been plenty of those. It’s because it is using Unity.

For the longest time I’ve been exploring the possibility of developing social games in Unity. Yes, the Facebook integration in Unity makes it a bit more attractive, and the benefits of working in a proper 3D engine rather than working with Papervision3D is a dream – but the biggest barrier of all stands in my and most likely every other social game developer’s way. Unity’s install base. So naturally day after day I look at AppData like a hawk to see what Paintball 3D is doing. So far the statistics aren’t astonishing but they’re not atrocious. Seeing some slow but steady growth, Paradise Paintball 3D is now at over 51,000 monthly active users, averages out about 3,700 daily active users, which equates to about 7% of monthly active users being daily active users. Like I said, impressive? No not really.

What does this mean for social game developers? It means that we’re still stuck with the likes of Papervision 3D and aren’t available to leverage the power of Unity 3D to our advantage due to the barrier of a simple plug-in. Will this limit the industry? Not yet. There are still plenty of interesting things we can still due with isometric views and Papervision 3D but in the future it’s going to be essential for the growth of social games. So what should be done? Unity needs to look for a way to distribute their plug-in to the masses. By increasing the install base to at least half of the 400M Facebook Audience I could already see many social game developers jump on board with Unity. Whether Unity does this through a partnership or some clever method of their own is up to them, but in order for Unity to become a viable option for social game developers Unity must lead the way in this forefront. Until then, I will continuously watch AppData statistics of Paradise Paintball 3D until the day comes that I know we can start developing our social games in Unity.

Constantly I am asked the same thing over and over again. “Christian, how do you do _____?” The schema is always the same and the topic varies. Some times it is regarding physical fitness and how I manage to accomplish goals I set for myself, or how I manage to discipline myself to follow a particular diet. Other times it’s regarding my career and how I managed to work on some of the projects I have worked on or how I achieved the position I did or rather made it into the game industry. To be blunt the question might as well be, “Christian how do you win?” Want to know the answer on how you can be win? Just do it.

Ridicule Nike’s slogan all you want but all jokes aside, it’s absolutely spot on (and trust me, I don’t wish that the focus of this post was based on a marketing slogan but alas, they did a brilliant job). Anything, and yes I do mean anything, can be accomplished by just doing it. There’s no secret sauce, formula, hidden path, or password that you need to get the resources you need to do what you want or simply put just do what you want. All you need is the ambition, desire, and most importantly will to do what you are setting yourself out to do. The hardest part is figuring out your desire. The easy part is finding the will. It can take someone a lifetime to ask themselves what they might want to do. Don’t worry about that! Don’t be afraid to have different ambitions or desires but don’t not have them or be afraid to commit to them. This is how you grow and refine your ambitions and desires into what you truly want to do. That becomes a pure, untainted, beautiful desire which you will find the will to do. Desire away, and will comes naturally.

Right now you might be saying or rather thinking to yourself, “Yeah sure. I’m just going to want to do something and do it. That’s going to work.” Yes – it will work. I wanted to decrease my body fat percentage. I wasn’t sure by how much, or what my ultimate success metric would be. I was going to let my will figure that out. So how did I will myself to do it? Every morning I would set an alarm at 4:30AM and say to myself, “Alright Christian, let’s go “eff” the gym up.” Sure there was grogginess and murmurs of not wanting to wake up but as soon as my two feet touched the floor of my bedroom it was, “Let’s go “eff” the gym up!” and that was that. So for 5 days a week I worked out and went to the gym. As for the nutrition part this part was even easier even for a foodie like myself. Everything which I deemed to be unhealthy I told myself was disgusting. Friends would order cheeseburgers and I would comment to myself or out loud at times, “That looks disgusting.” Everything I saw that I knew was unhealthy I would tell myself it was disgusting. That’s the beauty of the human mind. It can be trained or rather willed into believing what you want it to. It’s a highly complex computer which accepts whatever training you throw at it. Not a lot of people understand that. Knowing this is one of the most valuable pieces of information any human can possess. I did this for 3 months (I’m still doing it, although I take breaks every now and then) and the results are great. I’ve lowered my body fat percentage from 13% down to 9% and am now looking to get to 7%. It’s amazing what you can do when you don’t limit what you want to accomplish.

The same way I improved my physical performance you can use to accomplish whatever goal you would like to. Another brief example is I wanted to be in the game industry. So I took the first job I could that was associated with video-games. It was at a company local to my college as a community manager and I worked full-time while attending college. 3 years and a couple months later I’m the Studio Director at my own video-game studio and I’ve worked on Guitar Hero, Call of Duty: World At War, Transformers, and other titles. What I’m trying to get at is that you shouldn’t get too hung up on the details or logistics about how you go about doing something. Just do it. Find a task that will help you reach your desire, keep at that task, refine it until you perfect it, and you will find that that task has now branched out into many other tasks and you have now accomplished your desire by just doing it.

It was in September that I took the leap from the console game space into the social game space. Now, 5 months later I can say – or in this case write – that I do not regret this decision, at all. The very first things that made me excited about working on games are present every day without fault at my studio, Toy Studio. Passion, energy, enthusiasm, prototyping, creative freedom, innovative ideas, optimization, perfection, to name a few are elements which are ever present in our studio’s environment every day without fault. Something which I missed greatly when I was in the console space for quite some time. Now you can go ahead and ask yourself, “So you rather work on a game like Farmville, Restaurant City, or Killer Toon rather than Call of Duty: World At War, Guitar Hero, or Transformers?” Yes. Absolutely. No question about it, and I’m going to tell you why.

I don’t care who you are, how many people’s first names you know, or what you do to get to know everyone on your team but I will tell you no matter whom you are that you simply cannot get to know 150+ people who are on the same development team you are on. Call me crazy, old-fashioned, whatever you would like but the work you do with 8-10 people who work within arms reach of you day in and day out is going to matter more to you than the work you do with 149 other people. Why? Because the sense of personal investment you have in a small team is absolutely amazing. Every one on my team relies on each other to do an amazing job. This creates a personal sense of accountability that can’t be matched with any other team size. And what does that lead to? It leads to the entire team caring about the game, and not just that the game makes a profit but that it is a good and fun game that everyone will enjoy. While we might not get it right the first time – and please don’t blame us, we’re learning – we think about how we can continuously improve on what we release and how we can get it to the point that everyone who plays it is happy because that is our ultimate goal, to make you happy. Without a small team, and a  strong sense of accountability which drives that passion I just wrote about we would be complacent, ineffective, and not care to expand on the player experience and most likely leave our audience with a broken game. Instead, we love our audience, care for our audience, and hold each and every one of us accountable for every one of our actions. In other words, we all know each other very well and know what we’re all working on. Like I always tell my team, “We’re our own dysfunctional family.”

While in the console space you have to “get it right” the first time, within the social gaming space we can optimize until the day we die. Every mechanic, every formula, every single user-interface element, can be implemented, tested, and reviewed for effectiveness of engagement. You can continuously strive to achieve perfection. We get real-time results if what we changed is better for our players and if they like it better. What more can you ask for? Which leads me to my next point about why I love working on social games, innovation.

The amount of times I have pitched a new idea when I was within the console space only to hear back from a publisher, producer, or anyone for that matter that it was too “innovative”, the risk couldn’t be taken due to the franchise, or other similar reasons were numerous. I’m not saying that everyone in the console game space is not innovative, not at all. I am saying that it is much harder to pitch innovative concepts in the console space due to the lack of ability to test these concepts prior to being committed to them. In social games, the opportunity to innovate and fine tune a new concept is astounding. Conceptualize it, prototype it, implement it, and then test it. There’s the cycle you go through and if you achieve your desired results there you go, you now have a new feature. You don’t see the desired results? No love is lost and the feature is nixed. Simple as that.

Finally, the last thing which has me loving the social game space is the challenge. Millions of players come and play our game. None of them alike what so ever. Some are 43 year-old mothers, others are 23 year-old recent college graduates, and others might be 12 year-olds escaping the clutches of their homework. Each and every one of them expecting and wanting a different experience. I can’t even begin to describe the challenge that we attempt to overcome everyday and what a pure thrill it is, especially for a person like myself. I love to please my audience and the fact that anyone, and I do mean anyone can play our game and I / we have to account for that is pure joy. You could argue that the same holds true for console games but lets be honest and accept that a ton more people play social games. But the challenge of adapting to a huge demographic / audience isn’t the only one to overcome. The more exciting challenge which I see myself and Toy Studio overcoming is how we can educate our audience to become more experienced players and delve into social games that provide a richer and compelling experience while still not overwhelming. In other words, what role does Toy Studio and I play in advancing the social game space? My answer, a definitive and revolutionary role.

While I might eventually go back to the console space if the occasion arises I must say that the transition into a smaller but still competitive space has renewed the thrill of working on games for me and has increased my passion for the game industry more than ever. Some might think that social games are for those who can’t accomplish anything within the console space but believe me when I say social games are definitely not for the faint of heart or lack of passion.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves supports Twitter notifications of certain game events directly to your Twitter account. Unfortunately, I think there are areas of improvement for future games wanting to incorporate similar Twitter notifications. Specifically they are:

Twitter notifications from Uncharted 2 display as being from “API”. This is a huge missed opportunity to link back to the game. Every Twitter client I can think of uses this field to link back to its product page. Uncharted 2 should incorporate a change in a title update to link back to the Uncharted 2 game site at either Naughty Dog or PlayStation Network.

Chapter update notifications are disabled until there is a title update at some point in the future. I think this is another missed opportunity to capture some good data about how “sticky” the game is based on how many chapters people progress through at a time. Maybe it would provide some useful data about where people “break” in chapter progression and if this is trended among a large enough sampling of users. Or maybe it would affect the game design process in the future where you could incorporate longer chapters if people are progressing too quickly. And let’s face it, there are only 26 chapters in the game. Uncharted 2 chapter event notifications were nay going to bring about the Twitpocalypse. Sadly, this feature is now lost on a player like me. I’ve played through Uncharted 2, and that’s it. Done. Finito. Finished. I will probably never play through the game’s single player campaign again. So, even if chapter update notifications are enabled in a title update, it’s lost on a player like me.

Trophy update notifications should be more fine-grained. At least I think so. They are currently batched similar to “gained 11 Trophies playing #UNCHARTED2 over the past 2 days”. Lame. I’d love for people to know I’m a “Master Ninja” or have “250 Headshots” and that they should watch their back or head accordingly. At that point you’ve trumped PlayStation Network, because the update times for information on the PlayStation Network are abysmal. I’m done with Uncharted 2 and I have yet to see that reflected on PlayStation Network. Maybe that’s because PlayStation Network is free unlike XBOX Live? Either way, this is a real-time information economy and I’m a real-time information consumer.

I may update this post if I think of more ways that Twitter integration could be improved in games like Uncharted 2.

Title: Up Down Solitaire

Platform: iPhone

Website: www.updownsolitaire.com

Developer: Evan Gilbert

Price: $0.99

There are few things which are better than the original. To this day, nothing beats the original recipe of Coca-Cola made with proper cane sugar rather than corn fructose syrup. Yet sometimes, we are pleasantly surprised and the new ‘flavor’ of the original is not only refreshing but even better than the original. With that said, it is my personal opinion that Up Down Solitaire is better than any other type of solitaire out there. And it doesn’t just stop there, it’s amazingly well executed for the iPhone.

Up Down Solitaire as a stand alone game design of solitaire does surprisingly well. It adds upon the simplicity of Solitaire a blanket of complexity which is both comforting and a welcoming change. Rather than using one deck, you use two decks, and rather than just working on one foundation of cards, you’re working on two – each foundation respectively require the player to go up the deck or down the deck. Additionally, you have cards in the tableau which are drawn out into the draw pile. This might sound all very confusing, and in a way, it is. However, it’s only confusing for about 1 minute because while it might sound all that complicated once you do it for the first time, the game just flows and it’s beautiful.

The flow of the game is actually so brilliantly well done, that you never realize how much time you’re spending playing the game. Also, every game feels as if it’s a game you can win. Only until the very last few deals of the deck is when you realize whether you have what it takes to win the current round of Up Down Solitaire.

As for how the game is handled on the iPhone, nothing bad can be said about Up Down. To move a card you simply touch the card you’d like to move and then it’s destination. Ta-da! Your card is now in it’s appropriate destination. Care to see what cards are within a tableau deck? Hold down the top most card of that tableau pile, slide your finger to the slide, and there you go. You can see the cards within that deck fanned out behind the top most card. It really is as simple and intuitive as it sounds.

In addition to great game design and intuitive iPhone controls Up Down Solitaire also features compelling awards for all you “chevo whores”. Want to brag about how good you are at Up Down? That’s fine developer and designer Evan Gilbert has developed an online community where you can view a player’s statistics and a global leaderboard of Up Down Solitaire players.

All in all, Up Down Solitaire is a great re-imagining of Solitaire for 99 cents which includes great controls, design, and social media extensions. If like most of us you remember the good old days when you played solitaire while eating chips and not doing your work at the office this game is a must buy! Not only will it allow you to play one of the games which have wasted the most amount of time but you will be able to play it on a mobile platform and a version which is even that much more addicting! Exactly what productivity did no need is Solitaire on crack cocaine. Fortunately or unfortunately for the lot of us that is exactly what Up Down Solitaire is. Get ready to go to rehab.

NIN At Terminal 5:  1.0

Liverpool vs. Bolton: 1.0

EVE Online: 1.0

Snow Leopard: 1.0

WET Demo: 1.0

@DeanJamesSmith‘s #StalkerSaturday: 1.0

Mini Coupé Concept: 1.0

Facebook iPhone 3.0 Application: 1.0

District 9: 1.0

Inglourious Basterds: 1.0

Belgian Formula 1 Grand Prix: 1.0

Indianpolis Moto GP: 1.0

Grand Prix New York Mount Kisco, NY: 0.0

Real Madrid vs. Deportivo de la Coruña: 0.0

Heartland Brewery Union Square: 0.0

Have your own Binary Review which you would like to add to the post? Well send it in and it will make the next This Week In Binary Review feature! If you have a specific image you’d like to use as well feel free to include that as well. All you have to do is send an e-mail over to me (at) christianarca (dot) com.

There are some games such as Far Cry 2, Bioshock, and Shadow of the Colossus which we can analyze their game design mechanics and discuss topics such as ludonarrative dissonance. They are games that have depth and provide something a bit more than a shallow entertainment experience. WET isn’t one of those games and it doesn’t try to be. WET’s tag line is ‘Get ready for some monkey business,” and believe me it doesn’t sell short.

I’ve been hearing about WET for almost 2 years now and to be honest I never knew what to think. At first I thought, “Oh great, some great sexual reference to sell a game. How original.” Then the reasoning behind the title was discussed and a glimmer of hope shined in the sense where I said, “Okay, so maybe it’ll be an alright game.” Then I go on to hear how WET would be a game that someone to the likes of Quentin Tarantino would make. Don’t get me wrong, Duppy Demetrius might be an amazing TV writer (writer of several 24 episodes) but, he’s no Tarantino. Finally the WET demo has been released on the PSN European store and I have been able to see what this monkey business is all about.

One of WET’s back of the box features is the over-stylized art and yes, it is over-stylized. The entire universe seems to have taken on a gritty western indie action film filter adding to the what I’m dubbing to be Tarantino effect. It’s quite nice actually and adds to the overall fell of the game. As for the gameplay, you have several options of attacking those being jumping and shooting, running on a wall and shooting, sliding and shooting, and slicing an enemy with your sword. I don’t include standing and shooting simply because the way that combat has been designed simply makes it difficult for you to not perform a ‘bullet time’ action which will allow you to aim.

Attempt to simply stand and shoot and you’ll find that the aiming controls are loose and ‘feathery’ whereas when performing an action shooting sequence the controls are a bit tighter and your bullets will be finding their way into the back of an enemies skull much easier. Aiming while in an action sequence is actually done automatically. Something which at first was a bit ‘cheap’ if you will, however, by providing a second aiming reticle which allows you to control your offhand weapon this allows those players who might be a bit more skilled to get an extra edge over their enemies while those casual players can simply press and shoot. This ultimately lowers the barrier of entry for picking up and playing the game at any time by anyone and also is a great example of a pyramid approach in design where the features captures a wide audience however, allows for the depth of a much more hardcore player to go beyond that of a casual player.

The problem with bullet time action as a game design mechanic is that it must provide good flow for the player. This in my perspective is part level design and part systems design. I don’t believe that the systems design falters very much in WET. When Rubi is diving through the air and your aimin’ and gunnin’ it feels gratifying and good. The aiming responds as you’d expect it would if the entire world around you was soaked in molasses and you get a noticeable edge. There’s rather good flow to it. It’s when the environment around you doesn’t let you perform these actions where it becomes un-gratifying and ultimately the bullet time mechanic not only is rendered a bit useless but it irks the player. There were some moments when I found myself wishing that pointing and shooting while not in bullet time would be a viable option. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

A mode which breaks WET from it’s standard gameplay is rage mode. This mode is very much similar to the visual style of Kill Bill’s crazy 88 fight. It is like the rest of the game over-stylized and sticks to black, red, and white. Rubi dons a black with red highlights silhouette while your enemies have the addition of white into their model. One could might ask, “Just three colors for the entire level while in rage mode?” Trust me, it’s beautiful. Rage mode also provides a great balance of both gun and sword combat, something which the rest of the demo didn’t do so well. While in rage mode you can also chain enemy kills and seeing that counter increase is surprisingly satisfying. All in all, rage mode is a nice addition which could break up some rather monotonous gameplay. For more information on rage mode be sure to check out my friend and amazing artist Marc D’Amico’s blog post about creating rage mode, The Anatomy of RageMode in WET (the game) .

There are issues with WET, that is clear. The camera is a bit too close to the character at times making the player feel as if the space is cramped and providing for awkward movement. Certain actions which one would seem to think would be possible are not, such as jumping and then running on a wall, and as mentioned the level design didn’t seem to promote the core game mechanics all too well. However, I must remind myself this was merely a demo and while flawed the demo did make me chuckle, and completely enjoy myself for those brief 15 minutes. Eliza Dushku’s voice overs are also a small treat as she does a rather excellent job and her attitude suits Rubi perfectly. WET is an action packed ride that simply gratifying if you enjoy it’s theme and I definitely did. If you haven’t give the WET demo a spin yet be sure to do so. It might not leaving you soaking wet in ‘awesome’ but it is sure to leave you moist with anticipation for it’s September 15th release.

Polemical Model

The polemical model is largely based on Vladimir Propp’s 31 functions and what Greimas felt that Propp missed out on regarding actors and their functions. The polemical model of narrative postulates a unit of structure in between the simple narrative statement in the form of an event and the plot as a whole as it refers to a sequence of happenings within the story. This model is very similar to narrative enonce which deals with a sequence of happenings throughout a narrative. The polemical model, unlike the actantial model which we have used to describe actors, their roles, and an actor driven narrative is a bit different. While the actantial model has actors grouped with spheres of actions that are attributed to the actor, the polemical model is comprised of a sequential and syntagmatic unit that is made of functions (mostly Proppian functions). When discussing the polemical model it is advised by Theresa B. that we must refer to Propp’s 31 functions, as I stated above, however, also to Greimas’ perspective. his linguistic imagination, and how he sees it fit for the polemical model. For these reasons, I personally find it very hard to consider the polemical model a substitute for narrative enonce, practical syllogism, or actantial roles as the polemical model is simply a Greimassian perspective and opinions that have yet to be fully thought out.

After analyzing Propp’s 31 functions, it is Greimas’ belief that there are (at least) five functions which are recurring throughout the narrative. The combination of these five units within the narrative are what comprise what Greimas came to call, the Test or other times called performantial syntagm, or also narrative schema. The Test serves as a way for actants and the functions which they imply to interact / ‘communicate’ with each other in an abstract manner. The schema for a Test would look like:

Test = A(Sender, Receiver) + F (Subject, Anti-Subject) + C (Object, Subject)

= Contract + Struggle + Consequence

Greimas believes that the study of the Proppian fairy tale schema not only generates the Test, but, generates three different forms of Test which are the qualifying test, main test, and the glorifying test. Each of these tests, are derived from the Test schema which was discussed earlier. The qualifying test does exactly what it sounds like, it determines whether or not the hero has the ability / skill to embark on the main quest. Once this test has been passed, then it is when the hero may partake in the main quest. At first, the hero / subject actor must engage themselves in a contract in which they are the receiver and another actor is the sender of the contract. The contract is the initiation of a quest which embarks the actor on a quest (the narrative the audience would experience). Through the acceptance of this quest, the actor must then face their anti-subject (their equal from a different dimension) whom attempts to prevent the subject / actor / hero from completing the quest which they accepted. Upon the completion of the main quest, it is when the glorifying test becomes available to the hero. The glorifying test has the least probability to be rejected by the hero, as the hero will always strive for self recognition of their actions.

Aside: It is only within a traditional fairy tale that it seems the three tests, qualifying, main, and glorification will always be included. Other forms of narratives which are not fairy tales can have these qualifying tests however they are not always required. It also seems that the qualifying test could be part of a drama manager to see if a particular situation qualifies to generate a conflict or particular event.

An interesting note which can be made from an actor development mindset is that the anti-subject / villain is the subject’s / hero’s counterpart. Thus, it is very possible that subjects and anti-subjects are very similar within their actor development / actor database. It is not to be thought that subjects would have the same moral compass as anti-subjects, however, their determination and personalities could be very similar as they are both committed and have accepted a contract. While they are different contracts, often they will exercise (within fairy tales) the same feelings toward accomplishing their contract, furthermore, the subject and anti-subject are each other’s subject and anti-subject respectively depending on the perspective which you view both actors from. Therefore, the subject and anti-subject are set against each other and only one may succeed their object of desire. Due to each subject being set against each other, they must partake in different actions in an attempt to meet their objective which produces two different and overlapping narratives. Taking this into account, actors must have the ability to hold their own / generate their own narrative independently.

Aside: By having overlapping narratives due to subjects having different actions of desires, it seems that then it would be necessary for actors to drive narratives as they can cause narratives to be generated based on their objects of desire. On a more deeper level, it seems that it is objects of desire within actors that drive narrative. Thus, objects of desire are vital within the development of the backstory so that the narrative is interesting. Perhaps, actor driven narrative could also be considered object driven narrative.

Much like the test schema can manifest three different ‘types’ of tests (qualifying test, main test, glorifying test) it can manifest three different types of narrative enonce which make up the following schema for the ‘test’.

Narrative Enonce 1 = F : confrontation ( subject 1 <–> subject 2 )

Narrative Enonce 2 = F : domination ( subject 1 <–> subject 2 )

Narrative Enonce 3 = F : attribution ( subject 1 <– Object Value )

Narrative Enonce 3 can also be written as:

( subject 2 —> Object Value —> subject 1 )

The alternative form of Narrative Enonce 3 ( as shown above ) represents that narrative enonce as a transfer where subject 1 is the hero, subject 2 is the anti-hero, and O is the object value or object of desire. By forming a narrative enonce schema of the test, it is possible to apply our learnings from narrative enonce, such as the questioner mechanism, which allow us to tie in the test to narrative enonce in what would seem to be a very feasible fashion.

The test, is not just a schema for a traditional fairy tale, it is a central point at which a ‘transformation’ or cumulating point in the narrative occurs. During this transformation or point, it is when a a decision must be made which ultimately leads to the ‘transformation’ or cumulating point as previously mentioned. Furthermore, the Test is also claimed to be considered the most ‘episodic’ unit of ‘syntax’. This is considered to be so because the test is composed of various different ‘episodes’ which subjects must go through in an attempt to achieve their objet of desire. Greimas, considers the Test to be a minimal narrative because it is the core of a narrative which accounts for the definition of narrative as it changes through time. (The acceptance / contract, then the main quest, and finally the glorifying quest / resolution). Also, Greimas belives the Test to fix the limits of a narrative allowing for the narrative to not ‘run off course’ by defining the conclusion, or objects of desire of the narrative before and the beginning of the after.

Aside: Greimas’ reasons as to why the Test must be considered to be the minimal narrative are not concrete and seem to be very general so that they may apply to any narrative. There should be a better reason for why the Test can be considered the most minimal narrative. I do believe Greimas is getting to something by saying that the Test is the core of a narrative and it’s irreducible however, we must not only account for ‘fairy tale’ narrative.

Sender – Receiver Communication